Udacity to offer entire CS curriculum, certifications to obtain a degree online

https://plus.google.com/b/107809899089663019971/107809899089663019971/posts/ipuBzuy5o9h

by dhawalhs • 14 years ago

225 115 14 years ago

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Vivtek3• 14 years ago

Certifications for free? I mean, that's certainly what it sounds like. Talk about disruption!

waterlesscloud• 14 years ago

There's nothing that says the certification will be free...

swalsh• 14 years ago

It doesn't have to be free... it just has to cost less than 20k a year to be disruptive. This has the potential to be very disruptive.

One of the things that excites me the most is not only the potential to eliminate the massive load of debt that your average graduate inherits when they're finished with college, but it also lowers the barrier of entry to classes. So a person who already has graduated can study a cross-discipline a lot easier. I think the amount of people have an expertise in very different areas is going to increase. A lot of potential opens up if/when that becomes a trend.

Vivtek3• 14 years ago

I would swear that it did when I read it...

johnohara2• 14 years ago

If the course and course content is free, then certification has to be fee based. The model doesn't work otherwise.

Professors Thrun and Evans have never said certification will be free. MITx has stated that their certification exams will be fee based.

Think ACT, SAT, GRE, GMAT, LSAT, etc.

The certification exam for the course IS the brand. Passing a difficult, no-nonsense, comprehensive exam is certainly suitable for a CV.

IvoDankolov2• 14 years ago

I've received one of these emails as well. Almost makes you wonder how much would offline university degrees be worth in a few years.

Objectively, this is not a new idea. We have been talking about revolutionizing education for years - and free online education is pretty much the ideal. There is even enough material about most scientific fields and areas of study (some are more open than others, though) to become an expert.

So what is the problem? Becoming an expert with enough authority for people to actually listen to you. Easy enough to do it on your own in programming or entrepreneurship you might say. Not so easy in medicine or biochemistry (though I will admit I have no first-hand experience).

In that regard, certifications are a significant next step, provided that they get wide enough acknowledgement. That is the next battlefront, I think - convincing industries, governments and academia that online education is the way to go.

cal5k• 14 years ago

Part of the problem right now is that online education has such a bad rap - for example, The University of Phoenix is widely recognized as a degree mill. It remains to be seen whether companies/institutions (like Udacity) can get the certification part good enough that it will be worth something.

jeffreymcmanus2• 14 years ago

UoP's bad rep comes not because they're a degree mill but because they have a high dropout rate (which is sort of the opposite problem -- if they were a degree mill their dropout rate would be low).

Their problem is really that they spent many years recruiting unqualified students who used financial aid to attend, telling them things like "it's no problem to take on $100,000 in debt, with a degree you'll easily be able to get a job that pays $100K." Then the student drops out after four semesters and defaults on their loans, leaving the taxpayer holding the bag.

splatterdash2• 14 years ago

I think this will highlight differences among fields of education (?).

Programming is a very pragmatic field. Your ability to code is at its core judged by whether you can program something that works. Don't have a formal education? Whip up several interesting programs / websites on your own, and less people will care about your degree. In addition to that, it's becoming increasingly easy to learn the subject on your own.

Not many other fields are like that. Medicine for example. Sure, you can learn the names of the bones in your body, understand the use cases of different drugs in the market, but can you diagnose a patient? To learn that, you need access to training in real hospitals which are only given to students enrolled offline.

Same thing with biochemistry (needs access to labs and direct mentorship), law (access to courtrooms? or certification from proper boards). Many of these other disciplines are based on initial trust. It takes time for a biochemist or a lawyer until their work results in something. Having an actual (offline) degree places some kind of 'proxy' for the work result, until they actually appear.

I'm not that certain that they can be replaced / revolutionized by online classes. I'm all for revolutionizing education, but I don't think this new approach is able to revolutionize all fields of education.

IvoDankolov2• 14 years ago

I do agree on that point, but I'm not sure if pragmatic is the right word. Need of a specialized work environment, perhaps. Programming needs one, too, I suppose, but it just happens to be a computer.

Approaching other subjects the same way we do math and programming would be quite monumentally stupid. Could you trust a "doctor" to make the right decisions if his/her experience consists of watching lecture videos on YouTube and answering quizzes?

However, should we completely give up on those fields that require specialized practice? I see it as more of a challenge than a reason to despair. For one thing, you can combine online education with offline practice (provided willingness of all parties involved to experiment with new approaches, which is certainly not a trivial thing to ask). Also, an approach I'd try is having games that simulate the real-world task as close as possible. At some point, you probably would need specialized equipment and/or test subjects. Reducing that to a minimum, though, is in my opinion a very good thing, as it would drive down the cost of education.

ippisl4• 14 years ago

> but can you diagnose a patient? To learn that, you need access to training in real hospitals which are only given to students enrolled offline.

There are medical simulation tools that teach you to diagnose patients, train you in surgery , etc.They seem to be very effective as a training tool. One can imagine a certification process that tests you using this tool, and verifies that you have good diagnosis and prescription skills , and maybe part of the treatment skills.

That might be a good enough basis to admit you on a trial basis as a resident, or to a pre-residency short program.

Maybe in a similar fashion, one could build a simulation software that can train biochemists affordably ,and test to see you're qualified enough to work in a lab.

Jach2• 14 years ago

Historically, doctors and lawyers did teach themselves and many would sell their services without the appropriate papers. (Or the appropriate papers were obtainable through a test without requiring spending X amount of hours beforehand.) There's nothing fundamentally different about those fields as opposed to programming that make it so you can't learn the majority of the knowledge you'll need in the field from home. You can definitely diagnose without formal training--there's a story I heard of a guy who was having the signs and symptoms of a heart attack, googled them, realized he was having a heart attack, and called the ambulance. There's a book whose title I forget that describes in fine detail plumages, shapes, and other features about a huge variety of birds, but has no pictures, and it's commonly used by bird watchers to help them classify.

You may have an argument with biochemists since it's still a relatively new field, and specific universities are a decent place to find mentors, whereas historically you might just go seek a mentor from your local village or in the Big City for things like alchemy. The mentor may even have their own "School of Me", we don't have those anymore. Or maybe you might send a math paper to the Big Shot in Math in the UK, and if he likes it, he'll tell his circle of other math guys and suddenly you're "in" and will be recorded in the history books written by other people in the UK.

I think online media has revolutionized all fields of education and will continue to do so, but only in the simple way of making more correct information available and easier to acquire or recall. Self-learning is as old as books and online education only changes the source material from book to computer (which has a ton of benefits of course). I do agree with you that it is unlikely online education will ever completely replace having offline classes with other people, I know I would have preferred a programming mentor when I started out but all I had and knew of was a book. (It didn't occur to me then to seek out mentors at, say, a meetup.) The main reason I agree is because I don't foresee a decoupling of the university degree for a subject Y and a certification for doing Job X in a field sort of related to subject Y any time in the near future for many jobs, such as doctors and lawyers as you mentioned. What would be truly revolutionary for the Plebs is a mandate from the government saying HR departments can't require an accredited education, just as they can't require a particular race/sex/etc. (This won't stop discrimination of course just as the other mandates don't, but it would help I think even if it just dispels the notion that "I need a degree to get a job" that follows directly after "I need a high school diploma / GED to get into college.")

thomaslangston4• 14 years ago

> That is the next battlefront, I think - convincing industries, governments and academia that online education is the way to go.

If the program was an accredited degree, I think it would get us a lot closer. I'm sure that there are some online friendly institutions such as WGU and University of Phoenix who would be interested in offering a low cost CS degree program.

jonknee• 14 years ago

The University of Phoenix is not interested in anything low cost.

jeffreymcmanus2• 14 years ago

UoP already does quite a bit of online instruction. It's unlikely there's much going on here that they aren't doing already.

WildUtah• 14 years ago

Does anyone have a pointer to ow this company pans to deal with the Blackboard patents? A few years ago Blackboard patented various aspects of online classroom applications. They offer a free license to not-for-profit projects but it's unclear Udacity intends to remain entirely not-for-profit.

tylermenezes• 14 years ago

From what I understand Blackboard lost almost every legal case they filed with those patents, so as long as they have enough money to get through a lawsuit, they should be fine.

hack_edu• 14 years ago

However, they still sue everyone they possibly can in order to still lock down their market. For a few years now, the barrier for hasn't been the patents but for the cost of standing up to them in court.

tocomment• 14 years ago

We are going to have a great 2030's when all these patents expire...

RuchitGarg2• 14 years ago

Also, checkout http://www.9slides.com, which is not an university experiment.

dhawalhs• 14 years ago

List of courses Udacity (www.udacity.com) is expected to offer in 2012:

1. Theory Of Computation

2. Operating Systems

3. Computer Networks

4. Distributed Systems

5. Computer Security

6. Algorithms And Data Structures

7. Software Engineering Practices

8. Building Web Applications

Courses that have been confirmed and starting on 20th Feb:

1. CS 101: Building a Search Engine

2. CS 373: Programming a Robotic Car

tyrelb• 14 years ago

It would be awesome if they could compare (or map) this course list to what would be typically taught by a University-level Computer Science program...

I'm not interested in earning a degree/certification, rather I'd want to take these courses for general interest only.

I'm interested in understanding the depth and breadth of each course, vs. just going off the heading. If I can understand the value of each Udacity course as compared to the standard (eg: another University's program), I'm more likely to commit / buy into the whole Udacity approach.

i.e. "At Stanford, a typical 4/5-year degree has these X topics / competencies... and these 8 coures meet 50% of these competencies."

Without understanding the value of each course as it relates to, say, another University program or competency map, I have a hard time understanding the value of Udacity.

This probably sounds confusing, so if there's anyone from Udacity that wants to chat I'm more than open to. I think what Udacity is trying to achieve is great.

ams61103• 14 years ago

Those course titles do sound very typical for an undergrad CS program, if a bit heavy on the practical subjects.

folktheory• 14 years ago

As someone who already has a bachelors in CS, I'm still looking forward to fill in some gaps in my education with these. For example, I never took a Theory of Computation class.

rgbrgb• 14 years ago

I really wish they had chosen a name for their university that was not so Web 2.0. It makes it unclear to me whether this is a startup or an educational institution.

DrCatbox• 14 years ago

Yes, the name is very important, just look at the name google, that doesnt sound so Web 2.0 at all, I mean, who can even pronounce that?

burgerbrain• 14 years ago

Well Google is not a school, is it?

bo10243• 14 years ago

It's both. Did you check out their website? Looks like a classic startup.

> We are a rapidly growing company located in Palo Alto, California looking for great people to join our team. We're looking for a wide variety of backgrounds - the only thing in common is a passion for improving education.

tybris• 14 years ago

This sounds bold, but I think the success of Khan academy is simply due the fact that Sal Khan is a brilliant man, and so is Sebastian Thrun. The best teachers provide the best teaching experience, and the Internet allows everyone to have this experience.

pjscott• 14 years ago

The internet also allows everyone to avoid the crappy teachers, which is hugely valuable.

danielharan3• 14 years ago

Is it far fetched to think of traditional universities meeting the same fate as Blockbuster?

How far can this go?

jmonegro• 14 years ago

I'd say traditional universities will most likely move to similar platforms rather than just going extinct. This is because Universities provide more value than just the classes, like research.

tikhonj• 14 years ago

It is.

A university offers a lot more than just classes--one of the primary functions is just to bring together lots of smart people. Being able to talk to both other students and professors face to face is important; and having plenty of other like-minded students around is great for more than just classes.

On top of this, universities also offer research. Being able to work on something exciting while you're there is important. And research benefits both from having a high concentration of smart people and having the appropriate facilities. (It also sometimes benefits from having a university full of guinea pigs :).)

Also, while most CS classes are easy to move online, this does not hold for other technical subjects which need equipment and labs. An online-only EE or Bio or Physics class cannot reproduce the hands-on experience which is very important to understanding the material well.

lightcatcher3• 14 years ago

I think its important to distinguish that a lot of EE, biology, or physics classes could moved into an online format because not all of these classes are labs. The demos would be easy to replicate just as part of the videos of the lectures.

danielharan3• 14 years ago

Blockbuster is more than videos. It provides jobs to youth and sells snacks to customers. All of which is irrelevant to their basic economics when people stop buying from them.

If 10-25% of students decide to learn online, a university's budget is seriously compromised.

This could shutter a lot of the teaching-focused universities.

bo10243• 14 years ago

I think it can be successful in a niche, but won't go too far.

Universities have two main components: teaching and research. Udacity has a quite competitive teaching model -- there are cons compared to traditional schools, but also some pros.

But they don't have a research model. For a professor to leave their school and work somewhere like Udacity, they have to pretty much give up their research in favor of the opportunity to teach many students (online), and the money. Some may be willing to make the tradeoff, but most of the best professors won't and probably never will.

That's why I think the most successful online teaching programs will be affiliated with traditional universities. In CS, you could argue that the monetary resources needed to do research aren't as high, and you don't need specialized facilities. Maybe so. But you still need colleagues and collaborators -- especially in other fields like biology or engineering -- and you need grad students. And trying to do an online PhD doesn't sound very viable or desirable.

And in other fields than CS, where you absolutely need facilities, centers, etc to do research, it will be even harder to attract good faculty to a place that has none of these. You could build them all and bring in grad students, but then you're just a copy of a traditional university with no undergrads, and it's not clear why you didn't just partner with a traditional university in the first place.

So, this model may attract large numbers of students, but because of the research angle I don't see schools like these gaining the prestige and reputation necessary to draw students away from most traditional colleges.

danielharan3• 14 years ago

That prestige issue goes away real fast for most students if the degree lets them get a job.

ams61103• 14 years ago

Traditional research universities will be around for a long time. Good online schools may eat in to the commuter-campus types of schools that are mostly teaching centers. This would include a lot of the regional campuses of major state schools.

ashconnor• 14 years ago

How will they combat cheating? I mean if it's all done remotely then what is stopping somebody completing the degree for somebody else?

learc833• 14 years ago

There are plenty of online schools already. They usually either have you take tests at a local third party testing center, or they watch you through your webcam while you take tests.

Additionally there's plenty of cheating going on in traditional universities. I've even heard of people being paid to take entire classes for other people.

ams61103• 14 years ago

Agreed. If you're going to cheat, you'll cheat. It might even be easier to detect, e.g. enrollment and registration coming from one IP, but all coursework submissions happening from another. Or other more subtle detection mechanisms could be developed I'm sure.

derektc• 14 years ago

Taking the big tests at third party testing centers should be the way to go.

However, I would like to point out that an university does not merely comprise of lectures. The research projects, internships and even the interaction with peers cannot be recreated online. Traditional universities still have an edge over this.

Jach2• 14 years ago

I imagine your concern is "how can an employer know this cert means anything?" The short answer is they can't, employers should stop filtering on presence of degree/cert/buzzword. For the jobs where certain certs might matter in a legal sense (certain areas of civics engineering I'm sure) I would hope they vet candidates above and beyond presence of the cert and knowledge of the most basic facts.

In practice, the result of cheating for a degree is the same as lying on a job application or resume. When the person gets hired for a job in that field their performance will make that job short-lived (if they're genuinely bad). Similar for putting a school and degree they didn't go to on their resume just to get hired. If they really don't know the material, their performance will show and worst-case the company lost six months of time they could have spent taking someone else through the hiring process. (Ed: okay, worst case is that the person's incompetence causes them to blow up the Earth on the first task they're given.)

If they do know the material, and their job performance is good, do you really care that they cheated for the degree or lied about having gotten it? (Okay, it pegs their honesty level quite a bit and you should definitely start bolting things to the floor, but if they do the work well they're still a valuable bee and you can keep them on while looking for someone else if it's morally offensive enough to you.)

keiferski• 14 years ago

A good portion of a degree's value is in its branding/prestige value. It's not just about the knowledge, it's about the overall reputation of an educational institution. The material at Penn State is 99% the same as MIT's. If this weren't the case, MIT and Stanford would have lost their luster to public schools decades ago.

Unfortunately I don't see a degree from a website named "Udacity" garnering anywhere near the level of respect that a traditional university has. Step 1 to bringing down the university system: pick a decent name.

noahc8• 14 years ago

Udacity isn't a brand yet. Someday something like it or it will be. Then it won't matter.

I respect people who are resourceful and get stuff done. If you choose to go to college and wait out the great recession, I'll look down on you no matter if you went to MIT or Stanford. If you went to college for business or technology and you didn't produce anything during your time at college, you'll have a hard time convincing me to hire you.

It's only a matter of time before the rest of the world catches up to my way of thinking.

TruthElixirX• 14 years ago

That sounds like an awful way of thinking.

zheng• 14 years ago

This is just as poor of an attitude as the people who only care about the degree. Like anything else a potential employee has done, a degree (especially from a good school) adds something that you can't capture using any other metric.

lightcatcher3• 14 years ago

"I respect people who are resourceful and get stuff done."

Does getting a college degree not count as getting stuff done? Would you rather someone list every single problem set, proof, project, etc that they have done? I can vouch that a degree from some schools requires much more work/time/resourcefulness than making a couple of cool projects on github.

Also, as a technologist, my ultimate goal is to push things forward. Think SpaceX, Google, Intel, or even something smaller like Lytro or projects like Google's autonomous vehicles. These technology beneath these things (cheap manufacturing, PageRank, integrated circuits, etc) isn't invented by the people who make CRUD webapps; its made by those who master a field and have some insight to vastly improve their domain. That's what changes things.

Note, mentioning Apple or Facebook might seem like a counterpoint to my statement. I would argue Apple has pushed design forward in the same way Intel has pushed the semiconductor business forward. However, Facebook seemed to have no extraordinary technology at its core, but just capitalized on a hole in the market so much that it actually has changed how society functions.

Also, I'm not at all discounting the hustlers who get stuff done, by I think to really change things, one must be a hustler (or know one) and also have extraordinary technology.

achompas7• 14 years ago

I've replied below a few times, but I need to respond directly to this comment:

It's only a matter of time before the rest of the world catches up to my way of thinking.

What's so special about this way of thinking? Do you really believe in the existence of brilliant MIT or Stanford grads who have produced nothing during their 4 years in school? Further, do you believe these hypothetical underachievers are getting hired by Google, Facebook, Apple, Intel, or any other excellent company?

You're populating this thread with straw men and false dichotomies. The two spectra you're talking about -- autodidactism versus traditional education, and real-world experience versus theory -- are not mutually exclusive. There are students with strong theoretical training who hack on projects at AT&T Labs over the summer, and there are autodidacts who take night classes at their local university or college.

Please stop spouting off about "people who get stuff done," or these pseudo-sheeple you've dreamt up who go to Caltech, get degrees, then do nothing. Everyone gets stuff done in one area or another.

mathattack• 14 years ago

The material may be the same but the fellows at MIT generally pursue it much deeper.

sidww2• 14 years ago

A lot of the learning occurs outside the classroom too. Going to an good university helps facilitate that. Not to mention the possibility of working on research with some of the best minds in the world.

rkon• 14 years ago

> The material at Penn State is 99% the same as MIT's

As someone who attended Penn State (but not MIT), I would have to say that's some extremely wishful thinking. And even if the material is 100% identical, the way it's taught certainly isn't. The fact that the latter is far more important is undeniable. After all, why bother with a university at all when we could all purchase the same material (textbooks) on Amazon.com?

You also seem to ignore the fact that many tech companies are now far more interested in your personal website/portfolio and GitHub page than the degree listed on your resume. Even if you find a potential employer who values an expensive piece of paper more than your actual ability, would your really want to work for them anyway?

akavi• 14 years ago

I haven't attended Penn State or MIT, but I have attended the University of North Texas and Yale, and I agree with you 100%.

While there were differences in curriculum, the biggest difference I found was in expectations for the work I produced. My Yale classes have simply expected be to do more with the material: take it farther, make more inferences, produce a more insightful answer/project than the ones I took at UNT did.

Regardless of branding, I could never say the experiences have been interchangeable.

itmag2• 14 years ago

You also seem to ignore the fact that many tech companies are now far more interested in your personal website/portfolio and GitHub page than the degree listed on your resume.

Isn't that just a SV thing, though?

Even if you find a potential employer who values an expensive piece of paper more than your actual ability, would your really want to work for them anyway?

For many or even most people, the answer is a resounding yes. They just see the college degree as a painful/expensive ticket to gain entry. The skills necessary to do the job will be learned in the first 6 months of working, and the degree is just the shit-sandwich/iq-test-by-proxy you have to endure to get your foot in the door in the first place.

This is even more so the case where I live, due to the Scandinavian tradition to defer to experts and promote based on seniority and credentials. Oh, and having free college helps too, I guess.

shriphani• 14 years ago

Just looking @ SICP vs the intro course I took, I can definitely say that assuming my intro = MIT 6.001 would be cheating myself.

UK-Al05• 14 years ago

They don't teach sicp anymore. It was replaced with a python alternative I think.

itmag2• 14 years ago

As someone who is extremely interested in getting started in the e-learning space, what are some ways to offer credentials to people via your e-learning company?

I imagine there is a host of options, ranging from formal university credits (which would require teaming up with some educational institution) to just an email saying "congrats, you done it bro". I'd imagine the interesting options lie somewhere in the middle?

gatlin2• 14 years ago

I've said this elsewhere. Good lectures, even good exams, must be matched with good projects and discussions with peers (refereed by a deeply knowledgeable teacher). I wonder if a cottage industry of local study groups will form around these lecture sources. Perhaps Udacity could even spearhead the creation of these and offer some kind of certification to vouch for the local teacher.

Then you have the best of both worlds: an internally consistent curriculum with good lectures and digested information paired with one-on-one instruction and project development / discussion which will serve individual students in their own unique ways.

mwmnj• 14 years ago

would be great to start seeing "Udacity meetups" or something

gatlin2• 14 years ago

I think community based schools will start cropping up. They'll align with some subset of online course material and there might be a local teacher to help coordinate but otherwise, it's the students themselves helping each other. The local tangible presence would not only allow for that interaction / project based element I'm so fond of, but also to help pool resources for equipment.

If we're going into this brave new world of private, decentralized education we may as well do it in such a fashion that your own financial status doesn't prevent you from participating.

Homunculiheaded• 14 years ago

I know of a grad CS course that is essentially doing this. Students watch the lectures and help each other out, then supplement the course by presenting papers and aiming to have project ready for publication by the end of the semester. It's a small course consisting of grad students and upper division undergrads. It will be an interesting experiment.

But I think this is a great model, in my experience state schools tend to have pockets of really bright students that can easily out preform the quality of the teachers (certainly not always the case). There are huge opportunities to improve public higher education in the US

robryan• 14 years ago

There was heaps of great discussion in the ai class forums, I'd expect that to continue and grow to more of those on the class getting involved.

ilaksh• 14 years ago

How do they make money if the courses are free?

magoghm4• 14 years ago

My 16 year old son took the online Introduction to AI class and liked it very much. I told him that Udacity plans to offer an entire online CS curriculum & certification, and he's now very interested in evaluating if he wants to get an Udacity degree instead of going to a more traditional university. I guess I will have to do some serious thinking before I decide if I should encourage him to get an Udacity education or a more traditional education.

thomaslangston4• 14 years ago

I'd encourage him to get both.

At least in the short term an Udacity education is going to be considered the same as self-taught. A traditional education however is going to open up other opportunities that the self-taught cannot easily obtain. As long as Udacity is free however, there's no reason to not pack in some extra classes if he has the time.

magoghm4• 14 years ago

I have a traditional education, BS in CS & EE, and it seems to me that it never has been relevant in my professional life. I'm not talking about what I learned in college, that part has been useful. I'm talking about the certification aspect. I finished college 29 years ago, and in all that time I've never had the issue of showing some kind of certificate come up when being offered a job. Maybe I'm an exception and I'm underestimating the certification aspect, but what I'm more concerned about right now is that he wouldn't experience meeting many different kinds of people if he stays at home to study instead of going to some campus, and that doesn't feel right to me.

I'm also concerned about how complete is the curriculum at Udacity going to be. I'm sure all the CS classes are going to be pretty good, but what about other subjects like math & physics? I wonder what they are going to do about that and who's going to teach them.

Udacity to offer entire CS curriculum, certifications to obtain a degree online

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